


Hang On

by Duck_Life



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adults, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Sad Richie Tozier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 04:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13000152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: After the sewers, after everything, Bill and Richie talk.





	Hang On

Bill wakes up around four in the afternoon, feeling drained and exhausted and somehow wide awake. Already, the events of the sewers have started to fade, like a bad dream that he keeps having to convince himself really happened. 

He remembers Eddie, though. He remembers Eddie lying still and pale on the ground, Eddie entombed forever in the cistern. So he’s not really surprised that when he walks outside of the townhouse, Richie is sitting mutely on the curb. 

“Hey.”

Richie doesn’t startle, doesn’t even turn around. “Hey, Big Bill,” he says flatly, toying with a cigarette in his right hand. “Big Bill, do you know what this is?”

Bill sinks down to the curb beside him, his legs creaking when he sits as if to remind him that he really isn’t still the boy he was 27 years ago. “A cigarette?”

“This is my last cigarette,” Richie says, still in that same flat voice. “My last fucking one. See, I could buy more, except that Keene’s Drugstore sank into a sinkhole.” 

“You could always buy some more at the airport,” Bill suggests.

“Yeah, I could.” Richie rolls the cigarette between his thumb and index finger, studying it like he’s looking for imperfections. “He hated these, you know. I mean he hated how they smelled. He hated me smoking them.” A smile crawls across his face before it freezes, like he remembered suddenly that Eddie’s gone. “R-remember, he used to call me and Bev nerds for smoking?” 

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Jesus.” Richie loses it, his face crumpling. He lets out a sob, muffled in his hands. Bill’s quick to loop his long arms around Richie and tug him close, hold him tight, the way he did with Georgie once upon a time. His parents lost Georgie and then they lost all their love for  _ him _ as well, and that was wrong, that’s what he’d told It.  _ That was wrong _ . 

Bill’s not his folks. That may be the scariest thing about growing up, becoming your parents. He knows Bevvie was scared of it, and Eddie too. But Bill isn’t like his mom and dad. He lost Georgie, and he lost Stan and he lost Eddie, but all he has left now is love for his friends. Too much of it; it overflows. He loves Mike and Beverly and Ben. He loves Audra. He loves Richie. 

“Richie,” Bill says, “you loved him.” It isn’t a question, it’s just something he knows, the way he knew early this morning that Mike would be okay. He knows Richie loved the man they left behind, and not the way Bill loves Richie, not the way Bill loves Mike and Beverly and Ben. The way Bill loves Audra. The way Ben and Beverly maybe love each other. 

“Yeah, so?” Richie scrubs the tears from his face, looking a lot more like the twelve-year-old kid Bill used to know than the contact-wearing disc jockey from LA that he turned into. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.” Richie doesn’t look convinced, and Bill just hugs him tighter. “Hey. It  _ matters _ .” 

“He saved our asses,” Richie says, staring down at the asphalt, at the bits of mica glinting in the late afternoon sun. “Maybe more than that, hell, he saved our  _ souls _ . Billy Boy, you and me’d be worse than dead if it weren’t for Eddie Fucking Kaspbrak.” 

“I remember,” Bill says, but he doesn’t really. It was just this morning, but it already feels fake, detached. He knows he and Richie were fighting It, and that they were…  _ somewhere _ , staring down the barrel at  _ something _

( _ the deadlights _ )

terrifying, but it’s all just a blur. He remember how they felt, but he doesn’t remember what it looked like, what it sounded like. He remembers the relief he felt as he dangled on the edge of infinity and Richie Tozier suddenly grabbed his hand and yanked him back home. 

“You gotta write about this,” Richie says. “Write a book. Fuck, write a series. Even if it’s all fictionalized. Even if it’s all about, like, Freddie Maspbrak. People need to know that… that there was a guy like Eddie. And he was… people need to go.”

“Rich—” 

“I’m not gonna forget him,” Richie says suddenly, urgently. “I can’t. I don’t want to. If I… Bill, please. Tell me we’re gonna remember him.” 

That’s not a promise Bill can make. “Richie—”

“Please.” When Richie’s speaking in his own Voice, he sounds remarkably young. And more scared than he was the entire time they were sloshing around in the sewers beneath Derry. “I already lost him, I don’t wanna forget him. Please.”

“Just…” They escaped a werewolf once, the two of them, pedaling like mad men on Silver. This is different, more futile. They can run from monsters but they can’t run from time. They can’t run from the comfortable, spiderweb-sticky feeling of forgetting. “Just remember how it feels. How this feels right now, thinking about him. Facts and memories might slide away, but the feelings stay. I think.” 

“Remember how it feels,” Richie repeats, mulling it over. He slumps against the curb, and Bill can suddenly imagine him in young adulthood, a sullen teenager drinking a can of beer and sulking outside. The Richie Tozier he never got to know. “Eddie’s dead. I love him, and he’s dead, and it feels… like shit.”

Bill wants to tell him things are going to be okay. Bill wants to tell him that someday missing Eddie won’t hurt so much, wants to tell him that they’ll even know who Eddie is in a week, a month, a year. 

“Yeah,” Bill says instead, leaning against Richie while Richie leans against him. “Yeah, it does.” 


End file.
